good news in the bad news...

The Weekly Journal
Is there good in bad news?

May 20, 2007

This week I considered throwing in the towel after a promising lead for an agent went south. Rejection is part of the publishing process and I've had lots of it; I often spiral for a few hours after getting zinged -- this time was different.

I'm not a quitter. I'm Mr. Confidence. There is nothing I can't do, and I have a track record to back up the bravado, but to date, I have failed to get an agent to represent my fiction. This week I had enough.

"What you need to do," a good friend suggested, "is get the manuscript printed, then die."

He wasn't kidding. Go to ebay and you'll find lots of deceased authors fetching princely sums for unknown books.

This week's rejection was awful because of how positive it was. Here's what happened:

After sending out tons of queries in January for my novel, I finally connected with someone that got me. The agency was a solid, mid-tiered NY group. In early April they wrote via email:

Dear Mr. Williams,I've spent the last two days completely absorbed in your novel. Chuck's candid, raw narrative left me breathless; I felt as if I were mourning with an old friend in the comfort of my living room. .This is a quick note to spread my encouragement to you and let you know that I'm passing your manuscript on to X. I will be in touch with you soon.

You can imagine my excitement. No one has ever been this enthusiastic. And yet, I've had many encouraging notes over the years; none panned out. X was the decision maker here, not the note writer; I knew better than to get my hopes up.

But I did. I mean why would anyone send this if they didn't think X would like it? And each day news did not arrive, I grew less hopeful; then this showed up:

Dear Mr. Williams,Thank you for letting me read MY YEAR AS A CLOWN. I apologize for the length of time it’s taken to respond; this was a difficult decision for me. I’m also sorry to say that I just fell short of falling in love with this. You’re clearly a talented writer with a keen eye for character development, but for some reason I failed to connect with it fully. I know that’s the most frustrating thing a writer can hear, but I trust that you’ll find (or have found!) a representative who’s whole-heartedly passionate about this.

Thanks for thinking of me and best of luck on your path to publication. Please feel free to send me any of your future projects. Sincerely,X (dictated, not signed)

I was talking on the phone when I read that email. The person on the other end thought we'd been disconnected. I had indeed gone mute. My head was spinning. There was bile in the mouth. I ended the call quickly, walked out on to my deck and tossed the cordless phone into the woods.

I didn't sleep for two days. I barely ate. I talked to no one. The end of this month marks nine years of trying to make a living as a writer. My creative progress has been nothing short of miraculous, but I'm no closer to getting a novel published than I was in year two, when an ICM agent requested the manuscript of my first novel after reading fifty pages (ICM is a top-tier agency).

That book didn't sell either.

I've climbed higher mountains. I moved out of the house before I was 18 and haven't taken a dime from anyone since. I was the first in my family to finish college. I published a non-fiction book, selling 15,000 copies before I turned 30. I once saved a baby raccoon from certain death, but I can't get an agent to represent my fucking fiction.

So I was done. Finito. Sayonara. Hasta la vista, baby…

What brought me back was my ability to keep rewriting. Before that first note had arrived, the rest of the leads from my January blitz had dried out. A few agents had made suggestions (a rarity from what I'm told). I was already rewriting when that first note appeared, but I didn't want to send them the new version since they liked what I'd already sent; instead, I kept rewriting. And that's what pulled me out of the muck this week: I had a new and improved Clown ready to go.

On Friday I rebooted the query process with the fresh manuscript.Now that I've started a consulting business, the pressure to squeeze cash out of writing has eased. But I still need to disconnect getting published from success. That's not easy in a world where folks judge the quality of wine by the price, songs by the chart position, books by the number of copies sold. So what was the good in the bad?

Most writers just get a form letter.

X said he'd look at other material.

Someone in the business said she was completely absorbed by my novel.

Blah, blah, blah…

In the end I still got dinged.

This week I was slammed. It was the worst blow ever, almost getting knocked out for good; but I got up before the count of ten. I can't control the reaction to my work; but I can control my response. Next time, and no doubt, there will be many next times, I plan to stay on my feet.